


Loose Ends

by Roselightfairy



Series: Finding a Voice: OCs and Extras [5]
Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Communication, Depression BoredomTM, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Ithilien, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:41:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28031811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roselightfairy/pseuds/Roselightfairy
Summary: When Gimli visits Ithilien in late spring, the elves are glowing, rejoicing in the length of the days and the thrill of their work.  It should be a joy to see Legolas this happy, but Gimli does not quite know what to do with himself.Luckily, Legolas understands.
Relationships: Gimli (Son of Glóin)/Legolas Greenleaf
Series: Finding a Voice: OCs and Extras [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2054061
Comments: 12
Kudos: 68





	Loose Ends

**Author's Note:**

> This is one of those fanfic-turned-therapy session pieces, born of my own recent malaise and lack of inspiration and then turning into something I don’t quite know how to describe. But . . . sometimes it’s hard watching your Person do something you can’t take part in.

The sun was sinking, gold light searing through the window and streaking Gimli’s vision, and still Legolas had not returned home.

Gimli stood before their small fireplace, gazing at the kindling he had heaped in it, but made no move for his flint. He might prepare something for dinner – the cabinets in this small house, the icebox half-submerged in the creek that wound through the trees, were as familiar to him as the kitchens in Aglarond – but he had no notion of when Legolas would return, or whether he would have any interest in food when he did so. He seemed to sustain himself on sunlight and song alone in these days, nourished by his work and his beloved forest, his face and body coming alive with every inhale of the spring air. More alive, indeed, than he had appeared in months.

The exact rhythm of their days in Ithilien was so much less predictable than in Aglarond; work in the woods relied on a combination of so many environmental particularities that Gimli had glazed over when Legolas listed them (Legolas still swore he had not once lapsed into his own tongue, but Gimli did not believe him). Yesterday Gimli had woken alone shortly after dawn, but Legolas had returned at midday; today they had spent a long, lazy morning in bed before Legolas left, and Gimli had not seen him since.

He might go out and seek Legolas himself. The elves would not mind – they would smile at him and invite him to watch as they worked, even to join in their song. But despite the generosity of their offer, Gimli could not help feeling out of place: welcoming as they were, the elves had no need for him when they were deep within their work, their souls in perfect harmony with the forest in a way his never would be. Their voices wove a tapestry of the finest cloth, no space between the weft and the warp for his own, always a half-breath behind and a tilt off-key. With Legolas, Gimli could sing in perfect harmony; with all the elves he could always hear the frenetic pulse of falseness when his own voice was added, the waves of sound straining to shake the unwanted addition.

He abandoned the start of his fire – the heat of the day had sunk into the ground, the roots, the wood of their home, and now radiated back up – and wandered over to the heap of cushions in the corner, letting himself drop with a soft thump and deflating into the pile.

It was not that he did not feel _welcomed_ , exactly. It was only – Gimli had never been accustomed to feeling at loose ends.

Late spring in Ithilien, it seemed, was too relaxing for his own good.

He lay there in silence for some time, watching the shadows lengthen and stretch up the walls and letting himself sink into a stupor. He had things here to amuse himself, had he a mind to fetch them – and of course he could make supper for himself, if he wished to – but the languor of the morning had settled over him and congealed into something gelatinous and heavy. He drifted.

He might have dozed – or perhaps the woods were not ready to let Legolas go completely, for he melted into the room as though born from the wall, flowing like a sunbeam over where Gimli lay and coming to rest with his chin propped on Gimli’s chest, his face rising up into view over the wild wisps of Gimli’s beard. Only then did he seem to take on full substance. “Well met,” he murmured.

He smelled of cedar and herbs and soil; his eyes were warm and molten in the light of the sinking sun. For a moment Gimli’s lethargy receded, enough to allow him an “And you,” in response, enough to tilt his head up just slightly.

Legolas obliged him with a kiss, light and soft, but drew back instead of deepening it. He tilted his head. “You are not well,” he said, but the words did not hold the edge of panic they might have earlier in their marriage. Now there was only a slight furrow of his brow, a narrowing of his eyes. A question in his voice, though the sentence had been a statement.

“I am,” Gimli tried to object, but he could not lift his voice enough to counter the heaviness in his spirit, could muster no more smile than a hollow structureless shell, one that collapsed in on itself with nothing to hold it up.

“In body, yes,” said Legolas. He turned his head to the side and pressed his cheek to Gimli’s heart, warm from the long day of sun – the barrier between them thinner in their own home, where Gimli did not wear his armor. “But not here.” He uncurled and stretched forward to kiss Gimli on the corner of the mouth: another little jolt of sweetness, another blow to the malaise. “Trust me to know, if anyone would. What ails you?”

“Nothing,” Gimli wanted to say, but the word fell flat before his mouth could form the shape. He took a deep breath instead, shifting the weight of Legolas’s body – somehow comforting, rather than restraining – and said, “I know not.”

“Hmm.” Legolas did not move, but continued to watch him – that deep brown gaze that Gimli always felt reach past his own eyes to hit somewhere in the depths of his heart, as if Legolas could see all the way into him. He was like this sometimes, _too_ knowing, on days he felt grounded in himself and in the world.

Today must have been such a day, Gimli thought, and to his alarm the thought brought a bitter taste to his mouth, a squirm in his stomach, rather than the relief he should have felt.

This, too – or something like it – Legolas caught. “But it is close to the surface,” he said. “Whatever weighs upon your mind. Tell me what you thought just now, beloved. Even if you do not know why it matters.”

It was too obvious that the thought troubled him – and why should it, when it was all he claimed to want? Gimli did not want to say it, but the gentleness in Legolas’s voice drew the words from him anyway. “I thought – you seem glad today,” he said. “Settled in yourself; grounded.”

“I am,” Legolas said, but his voice was slow and his face shrewd. “This work makes me feel present and alive. There” – his tone changed and Gimli grimaced, knowing his face had betrayed him – “there is the flicker again. What is it in those words that distresses you? I will not be hurt,” he added hastily. “Come now, Gimli; trust me of all people to understand that our feelings do not always speak the truth of our desires.”

The writhing in Gimli’s gut was back, but heavy now with guilt as he recognized the source for what it was. He pressed his lips together, unwilling to speak it aloud. How could he impose this on Legolas?

“Say it,” Legolas coaxed. “You have always asked me for the truth and assured me that you would still love me on the other side. Trust me to extend you the same courtesy now.”

It was those words that convinced him – for he did trust Legolas with this. He must, shameful as it was to confess it. “I think – I felt envy,” he said, the words heavy with reluctance. “That you feel so grounded, so present, on a day when you have been so long away from my side. That I played no part in bringing it about.” He laughed a little, bitterness leaking into his voice until he could nearly taste the poison. “What do I envy – a season? A forest? And yet you have asked for the truth of me, and that is all I have to give.”

Legolas was still on top of him, his face poised still in the same expression of anticipation. Neither his face nor his body moved in the moment following Gimli’s confession, and Gimli tensed – he knew this mask; he knew the way Legolas masked his hurt. Now he would apologize – and Gimli had known, had he not, that this would happen? What, had he thought to ease his own guilt by passing it on to his husband?

But still Legolas did not speak. Instead his eyes sank closed in a catlike blink and then he nodded. Breathed out, long and slow, a gentle rush of air that stirred Gimli’s beard.

“I have envied your forges before,” he said, and Gimli’s brow rippled with the shock of those words: a flinch, a widening of his eyes. Legolas said nothing of it, only continued. “And thought myself just as foolish as you feel now. But I have come to realize that there is bound to be sorrow in the spaces where our worlds do not touch. Those gaps, I think, are the emptiest places in any shared life.”

“You have – you felt this way?” Gimli said. How had Legolas hidden it from him? – but then, perhaps it was little wonder he had failed to notice. Whenever a thrilling new project seized him up, nothing else could hold his attention for long enough to notice such subtleties.

“I did,” said Legolas. “But Eleniel reminded me that you are yourself because you are a dwarf – that I would not have fallen in love with you if you were other than what you are – and,” he added with a wry smile, “that I would torment myself with guilt if I ever made you feel reluctant to pursue your passions. But that is not what I meant to impose on you!” Somehow that flash of anxious reassurance soothed Gimli’s own raw spirit: that reminder that Legolas was still here, still himself, wherever this discussion might go. “What I mean is that I love you because you are a dwarf, and that means that sometimes you must disappear into your projects for days on end. It means that you cannot hear the spring songs as we do. But it also means that you are the roots that bind me yet to this earth, the stone that holds heat even after the night has gone cold.” His hand crept onto Gimli’s heart beneath his beard and Gimli felt the shiver of ghost-tugs at his chin, his pulse thrumming where their bodies touched. “And whatever you feel now, know that I am so grounded and so joyful on this spring day because I knew all the while that you were waiting for me to return home this evening.” Another flash of a smile. “Any of my companions will attest to that, if it would ease your spirit.”

“I feel the same way,” was all Gimli could add. “If it eases yours.” It was true – even when he was deep in the creative throes of a new endeavor, explaining all his thoughts to Legolas’s patient ears was the greatest joy – what he awaited most eagerly when Legolas was away and delighted in when his husband finally came to visit. His chambers felt so empty when Legolas was in Ithilien; returning to them after a day of rewarding work was a lonely letdown – but when he was there, it marked the end of a perfect day.

Another kiss, on the other corner of his mouth. “I will hold it in my heart for the next time I forget,” Legolas promised with a sliver of a smile.

“Then I can do the same,” said Gimli.

“Can you?” The smile faded, and Legolas was abruptly serious again in that sudden flash-change of mood that always stole Gimli’s breath. “I do not mean to presume that your pain might be the same as mine, or that it might be eased so simply. Nor do I mean to make light of any sorrow I might be causing you here and now” –

“No – no.” It was true; Gimli found even as the words left his mouth that he meant them. Something had lightened in him at Legolas’s words; he could not so easily shake the twinge of guilt at his own relief, but – it _did_ ease his sorrow and his envy to know that Legolas was gladdened by his presence here as much as by the season and his work. He prized his role as Legolas’s anchor; he had always known that, but only now did he realize how much of his own identity it had come to mean to him. And to hear that Legolas understood – that he himself could understand – “I cannot promise I will not feel thus again tomorrow, but at least if I do I will understand whence the feeling comes.”

“But I would not have you feel thus again tomorrow,” insisted Legolas, “not if it can be avoided.” He lifted his chin from Gimli’s chest at last, propped his hands on Gimli’s shoulders, and slithered up his body. Like a lizard on a warm rock, Gimli thought, and could not help but smile. Legolas’s face hovered just over his now, and he smiled in return and touched a finger to Gimli’s lower lip. “Is there aught I can do to ease the weight for you, even momentarily?”

Gimli shook his head, then nodded. Perhaps it might be easier to watch the elves at work tomorrow without this weight of envy and guilt, or at least he might find something to occupy himself – but the hours stretched longer than the shadows when the sun tarried so in her journey across the sky. “Will you return before sunset tomorrow?” he ventured. “I know you cannot set your hours in the way I can, but – I do love returning home to you in Aglarond, and” –

“Before sunset it is,” Legolas promised. “And if I do not, you may come fetch me and carry me home over your shoulders. I give you permission.” His grin promised mischief, and Gimli laughed – sudden and startling, a flood of joy and relief, dissolving the lump in his stomach to nothing. Legolas’s head bobbed up and down with the motion of Gimli’s body, making them both laugh harder – and when the fit passed, Gimli felt lighter in body and soul alike.

He sighed at the relief of it and Legolas smiled, his fingers now wandering through Gimli’s beard in the way that always made him smolder. “But for now,” he murmured, “since I have at last returned to my patient husband, might we make the most of this evening?”

Gimli smiled back, true and easy, and hooked his arms around Legolas’s shoulders. “I could ask for nothing more,” he said, and he rolled them both sideways into the cushions.


End file.
